sddscombine

description:sddscombine combines data from a series of SDDS files into a single SDDS file with one page for each page in each file.
Data is added from files in the order that they are listed on the command line.
All of the data files must contain the columns and parameters contained by the first; the program ignores
any columns or parameters in a subsequent data file that are not in the first data file.

files:inputFileList is a list of space-seperated filenames to be combined. outputFile is a filename
into which the combined data is placed. If no -pipe options are given, the outputFile is taken as the last
filename on the commandline. To specify an output file with input from a pipe, one uses sddscombine -pipe=input outputFile. Similarly to specify output to a pipe with many input files, use sddscombine -pipe=outputinputFileList. Since accidentally leaving off the -pipe=output option for the last command
might result in replacement of an intended input file, the program refuses to overwrite an existing file unless the -overWrite option is given. A string parameter (Filename) is included in outputFile to show the source of
each page.

switches:

-pipe[=input][,output] -- The standard SDDS Toolkit pipe option.

-merge[=parameterName] --
Specifies that all pages of all files are to be merged into a single page
of the output file. If a parameterName is given, successive pages are merged only if the
value of the named parameter is the same.

overWrite -- Forces sddscombine to overwrite outputfile if it exists.

sparse={\em integer} -- Specifies sparsing the tabular data in the input to retain
only every integer-th row.

collapse -- Specifies collapsing the data, as done by sddscollapse.

-delete={columns | parameters | arrays},matchingString[,matchingString...],
-retain={columns | parameters | arrays},matchingString[,matchingString...]
-- These options specify wildcard strings to be used to select entities
(i.e., columns, parameters, or arrays) that will respectively be deleted or retained (i.e., that will not or
will appear in the output).
The selection is performed by determining which input entities have names matching any of the strings.
If retain is given but delete is not, only those entities matching one of the
strings given with retain are retained. If both delete and retain
are given, then all entities are retained except those that match a delete string without
matching any of the retain strings.